This specification relates to image annotation.
Text-based image annotation continues to be an important practical as well as fundamental problem in the computer vision and information retrieval communities. From the practical perspective, current image search solutions fail to use image content effectively for image search. This often leads to search results of limited applicability.
Given an input image, the goal of automatic image annotation is to assign a few relevant text keywords (also referred to as labels) to the image that reflect its visual content. Keywords can be assigned to (or associated with) an image by storing the keywords as metadata in any of a variety of ways, for example, in a digital file that includes the image, in a database with links or references from the keywords to the image, in an XML file with data linking the keywords and the image, or otherwise.
With rapidly increasing collections of image data on and off the Web, robust image search and retrieval is fast becoming a critical requirement. Current Internet image search engines generally exploit text-based search to retrieve relevant images, while ignoring image content. Utilizing image content to assign a richer, more relevant set of keywords can allow one to further exploit the fast indexing and retrieval architecture of these search engines for improved image search. This makes the problem of annotating images with relevant text keywords of immense practical interest.